D is For Dystopian, Fanciful Concepts

Originally I titled this piece, “D is for dragons, the Deer Woman, and Mystical or Dystopian Concepts.” It was descriptive but way too long.

What this article intends to do is encourage you to document any childhood beliefs or fears you may have had. I do not want you to be uncomfortable. Stop if you are.

That said, kids often have imaginary playmates, or become focused on magical or imagined characters from stories or books. If these sorts of things influenced you, record what they were and how you responded, and whether this could have influenced later fears or fascinations.

Scary Stories

For example, my dad was a skilled story teller . His telling of “Three Billy Goats Gruff” was told from a scary Brothers Grimm perspective. I did not think about the influence his telling may have had on me until years later when I realized I had a severe inexplicable fear of driving over bridges.

Distrust and Trust

My family was also big on teasing. I had imaginary friends who lived behind the toilet. I called them “The Little People.” They looked like pilgrims. Don’t laugh. I don’t know why they were there. My much older brother had imaginary friends who were fairies that lived on the windmill, or so I was told. Another brother who was the youngest brother, but 9 years older than me, scared the beegeesus, of me. I remember asking to be excused from the table. I went into the bathroom and began screaming from fright and could not move. Mom had to come get me because my imaginary friends had turned real. My brother had cut out little pilgrim people from magazines and placed them behind the toilet.

While this was frightening, I also learned to love being the center of attention when this story was retold to friends and neighbors. But I also learned that my much older brothers were not to be trusted.

I believe this distrust might have generalized into a distrust of guys.

Most of these types of these early life experiences cannot be paired in any sort of one-to-one fashion with later attitudes. But it does make me wonder about the impact of early experience on later attitudes.

Cautionary Tales

Think about these sorts of things. DId you always have a vivid imagination? Did you invent boogeymen in the shadows of your bedroom as a child? Do you love paranormal and or dystopian fiction?

Write about these things and speculate, yes, you can speculate in a memoir, as to how these experiences shaped you. This way you can include vignettes from different times of your life that perhaps have some similarities.

Give yourself permission to explore possibilities and possibly related events, You do not have to speak in absolutes. Interesting stories are just that. You need not lie. Just talk about these things.

Childhood memories can say a lot about a person.

I believe much of the isolation I experienced being apart from kids my own age, translated into my love of reading stories about empty dystopian futures.

Scary Cultural Beings

I only recently learned about The Deer Women as a spirit in Native American folklore and cultural beliefs. It could be that you were told stories featuring her or some other beings who serve both protective and cautionary functions in society while meeting out justice or death to individuals, often men, who harm women, children, or vulnerable individuals.

Did you learn from such stories as a child?

One boss I had, who was Hopi, when I worked at a museum would laugh and tell my daughter that if she did not behave that he would sell her to a neighboring tribe. This was a story told to children from his Mesa. Cautionary tales are heavy with symbolism and often rooted in regional Culture.

Dreams

I have some of the most vivid dreams I have ever heard of. I remember flying in dreams as a small child. Soaring through the sky was powerful and enabling. Maybe that is related to my love of fantasy and dragons.

What fanciful influences might have nudged you toward certain pathways in later life?